A West Palm Beach man employed with a company hired to replace the tiles at a West Boca Raton fire station is accused of stealing and pawning more than $600 worth of equipment from the station, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office reports.

Brian Gene Powell, 30, was arrested Friday afternoon on two charges of larceny, two charges of dealing in stolen property and two charges of false verification of ownership. Powell was employed with William Featherston & Associates, Inc., sub-contracted by Fire Rescue in June to change the tiles in the fire station on Pheasant Way near Boca Raton.

He went missing half-way through the job after investigators started asking questions about missing items, said Bill Featherston, owner of the company.

“Someone started asking questions about missing equipment, I turned around and (Powell) was gone,” Featherston said. “I had not seen or heard from him since.”

Powell was immediately terminated, Featherston said.

The items reported missing were a GPS, a pair of Oakley prescription sunglasses and a yellow Dewalt chop saw, worth $640 in total, according to the police report. Detectives later found that the GPS and the sunglasses were pawned at Value Pawn on Okeechobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach under Powell’s name.

Records show that Powell had served one year and eight months in state prison in 2011 on five charges of grand theft, two charges of criminal mischief and one charge of burglary.

Featherston said Powell was a re-hire and was not background checked before the Fire Rescue job. The company has since changed its background check policy, periodically background checking current employees as well as new and re-hires, Featherston said.